you have to be a little bit crazy to survive

Entries tagged with car

I don't remember much about this dream anymore, other than I was a random girl character who was working with Dominic Toretto (aka Vin Diesel's character from the Fast & Furious movies). I was at a huge garbage dump at night, and he was mad at me because I'd done something to betray him and he'd caught me. He told me to stay where I was for a minute because he had to do something.

I wasn't being watched, so I took off across the dump and escaped, eventually driving a car in typical high-risk movie getaway style. The rest of the dream fell apart from lack of logic.

So... why is it that the first time in ages I've had a dream about a Vin Diesel character, the dream plot has to be trying to get away from him? >.<

I was Dominic Toretto from The Fast & The Furious universe. It was daylight, maybe heading for evening, very overcast and raining. Some Asian guy challenged me to a race. We picked a certain stretch of road that left from a freeway off-ramp and went into some smaller streets. He went first, it was supposed to be a timed run so I waited. He called in to the group of people now hanging out near my car when he was at the midway point, which he seemed to think was great progress and I knew he was slow.

When he finished I got the signal to go, and away I went. Someone else was keeping track of the time. The first corner on the offramp was insane, but I took it fast with drifting. I did a lot of drifting, and hit that area where the other guy had called in before very long at all. I knew I was way ahead, no problems at all, and then shit! Cops! I almost wondered if the other racer had gotten pissed already and called them on me.

With cops on my tail I shot through the underpass where a flare marking the race's end had been shoved aside. I wasn't about to leave the race unfinished and I'd definitely won, whatever was going on now. As the road straightened out I could see cops trying to cordon off the streets ahead. This left me with one option, a gravel parking lot I could see an entrance to on the right. I wasn't happy about being further boxed in, but it was the open choice at the moment and the lot was huge. Lots of cars. If I moved fast and the cops got overconfident... for one thing I'd be hard to find. Plus, it was suddenly the dead of night.

I'd lost my tail for a moment while pulling into the lot, but I knew the cops had a general idea of where I was. I looked for somewhere to park fairly deep in, wondering if I could get away with not being spotted indefinitely but nah... nor did I want to try this crap on foot. I found a space near a red race car whose make didn't matter to the dream for the moment. Now I could see the cars from the outside, as if from a movie camera perspective. The car Dom was in was orange and black, and I swear to Eris it looked like a cross between a Bugatti and a Prius. I have no idea what the dream actually thought it was.

As Dom bailed out of his car to go hotwire the red one, I became Chess, my original character created for the F&F universe and Dom's very gay boyfriend. I was now half-aware that this transition, as cool as it was, didn't fit the earlier plot, but already the dream was starting to accept that there had been a passenger with Dom the whole time, and that he'd won the race even with more weight in the car.

Dom had gotten the red car's doors unlocked somehow, and I hopped in the passenger side and asked him what sort of car this was, as it was unfamiliar to me. I asked if it was a Lamborghini, but that didn't quite seem right. He said, "It's a Corvette," and finished up hot-wiring the car, slamming the door and pulling the vehicle out of its spot. I was rather surprised at the answer, as the body kit seemed a far cry from a typical 'Vette. I made some comment about it having come a long way from the oldschool look. (And now that I think about it, the thing looked more like a Lamborghini crossed with a... you guessed it... Prius. I need to move somewhere where I can car-spot for real, dammit. The greater DC metro area is garbage for that.)

Now the trick was to get out of the lot without anyone recognizing Dom as the driver. I remember being worried about this momentarily, but we made it past the cops and drove off for freedom.

The beginning of this dream involved running around a hospital in which most of the people had been turned into zombies for unknown reasons. They were slower than the humans but stronger (and waaaaay more of them). Those of us who were still not-undead were trying to get everyone who was still living together, and I remember attacking a zombie with a wooden pencil and literally having an argument with it as to the fact that a wood pencil stabbed into the heart should kill it. (Dream logic forgot that this applies only to vampires.) I won the argument, the zombie died.

At one point I was alone again running from zombies who seemed a lot smarter than they should have. I could hear one of them off in the distance sort of calling out to me that he'd find me. (Most of the zombies just did the typical horror movie "raaaaaaaaaar" or whatever.)

I found myself in an empty room that had cupboards up high and I remember trying to see if I could crawl up into a cupboard as some of them seemed to open up into the ceiling-works, or I could at least maybe hide until the zombies went away. I'm not sure if this succeeded or not because the next thing I remember was arriving in the hospital lobby where the survivors were all holed up defending one spot and actually managing to hold it.

I joined the group and after a while things calmed down enough that I said some of us who knew the local area should try and go out and scavenge for things like food and weapons. I told them that everyone should at least go in pairs, and to not let each other out of their sight. I even said if the other person had to go to the bathroom their partner should stay right in the bathroom with them and plug their ears and go "LALALALALALA!" (*snicker*) ....yeah... well it was smart advice for zombie-land at any rate, if rather goofball.

There were restaurants and stores sorta near the hospital, as well as some of our homes. I went to my house with a guy and his son (the house was nothing like anywhere I've ever lived in real life). As I was looking for useful things, I turned around and saw that the son was going zombie. The father was freaking out and the son appeared to be attacking him with some kinda weird black magical bits that flew out of his eyes. I told the guy to run for it but he didn't, he seemed upset he was losing his son and I told him there wasn't anything that could be done, if he wanted to live through this himself he had to bail!

Well, he was still not listening so I ran, managed to snag a bag full of large kosher crackers in the kitchen and ran out the front door. I hadn't had time to get much else of use (I don't think I even snagged any knives in the kitchen either, faaaail). Some blonde guy who's outfit and convertible car screamed California was pulling up in the driveway, he seemed a bit lost. He also had a little girl with him in the passenger seat (there was no back seat, the font seat was all one long seat).

I asked him for a ride, meanwhile he was looking for directions and I realized he wasn't local. I said, "You mean it hasn't spread past our town yet?" And he was like, "What are you talking about?" I told him something bad was happening, people turning into zombies, and I needed to get back to the hospital fast; I could show him where to drop me off because it was close by and then he should get the heck out of Dodge.

I could tell he wasn't sure he could trust me but he had his daughter move over into the middle so I could get in, then we were driving along the main drag (that had a lot of traffic... that I knew came from out of town and just happened to come straight through and continue on). I pointed out miscellaneous zombie and people corpses and then mentioned I'd been fighting them. Suddenly he really wasn't sure he should have let me into the car, I could tell by the look on his face. I told him not to worry, and to please just go right ahead and drive up the sidewalk that led to the hospital main doors (it went in from the road a bit).

He did, and several zombies started chasing us. They were fast enough that they were really close to the car and I couldn't get out and make it to the door. I told him to drive circles, and he managed to get the brainless things to keep chasing the car but they were a little slower than it, so before long there was space enough for me to make a run for it. I made it in through the doors and as far as I know the guy drove off like a bat out of hell.

Meanwhile I reached my impromptu buddies still holed up in the lobby in the middle of another attack. I told them the virus or whatever it was that was making these zombies hadn't seemed to have spread beyond our town yet, and I think we might have thought about moving locations to somewhere safer or trying to go warn the rest of civilization...

It's daytime and I'm on a road trip with my entire immediate family (parents and three siblings). At some point all the water in the car starts turning into foamy orange liquid like melted sherbert meets fizzing-out soda. We get out of the car and realize it's happening to all water sources around us (other people pulled over too). As we're wondering what the heck is going on, it's suddenly nighttime and UFOs appear and suddenly these white yeti-like creatures are appearing and killing people. (They looked like the typical yeti from World of Warcraft.)

As we're running away, I try to write in a small notebook what happened in case the US Government comes here and finds the place wiped out and can't figure out what happened before it's too late. (I remember some daylight while I was writing, but only for that part.) I have alot of trouble actually writing this properly (and actually think in the dream something about how it can be hard to read and write in a dream because the wrong part of the brain is in use) but eventually get it down after concentrating really hard.

The yeti are currently distracted killing others further behind us (I think one of my brothers got it at that point, the older one) and the rest of us find a lake. We jump in without a second thought and start swimming, thinking that if the yeti go off smell this will throw them off. The surface of the water has dark foamy residue from the water-transforming thing from earlier but it's still mostly real water.

My kid sister starts talking about something random and wants to show off a song of some sort and starts yelling it really loudly. I keep trying to tell her to shut up, but can only do so by being louder than her. This attracts the attention of the yeti, who are now coming after us. I think they got my sister... and maybe my mom... and also now we're being chased by crocodiles that the noise drew in as well.

The water is clean now and it's daytime again and we're swimming like mad trying to follow currents in this river we entered at the end of the lake. (The currents go faster than the rest of the water.) I think my kid brother was lost somewhere during this part. That left my father and I, and the dream started really falling apart during some odd conversation while swimming about "being a man" (and yes, at the end, I was a man, sort of late-middle-age and balding? lol). The water turned into an odd series of flat wooden trays with numbers on them and... okay I can't even describe it really. FAIL.

I was a man, one of the prisoners, and one of the masterminds of the excape plan. I'd worked hard on it, but the first part of the dream I actually remember was when the tunnel was ready to use and we had to move fast. It was night time, and I was right near the beginning of the tunnel in a dark shed or unused back room of some sort. The exit was out in fields beyond the enclosure, near the forest. (Definitely inspired by the movie The Great Escape even though I haven't seen or thought about it in quite a while.)

I think we had to move fast because we were afraid the alarm would be sounded early. The first person waiting to go through thought I'd want to go through first, but I whispered to them and the following people, "Go. Go!" They went, dropping the few feet into the shallow hole and scrambling along through the tunnel. More people in the line now, go, go, go! Adrenaline rush hit bigtime as the alarm sounded, but I kept telling them to go even though the people in line now were sure I'd want to leave at this point. GO!

By this point it was probably futile to get into the tunnel anyways, but there was a break in the line and I took the opening, dropping down and crawling along as fast as I could. I felt slight claustrophobia, but what I was most worried about was the last few people not making it through, and maybe not some of the people who'd gone just before me. But well, there was one way to find out, and I wasn't stopping now. The guy up ahead exited the tunnel upwards, and it seemed like he was pulled up. Had someone stayed behind to help move people out faster? It was nice to think someone else was endangering their own escape for the others.

But as I approached the hole up into the field, booted, uniformed legs and feet landed in the hole. Damn it. They belonged to a Nazi soldier, and he barked orders at me (or well, whoever was still coming out of the tunnel) to continue out. I obeyed, and my aquiescence was rewarded with not being hurt right away. The soldier pulled me up and someone else above the hole pulled me out fast, and I found myself shoved into an odd holding vehicle. I realized it must be some sort of super-economic troop transport, as I was pushed into a narrow slot created by barely-padded puke-green dividers that were quite solid, and another divider slid into place through the opening I'd been pushed through, thoroughly trapping me in somewhat tight quarters. I was fine standing, but the whole experience was rather odd.

There was the slight feeling of claustrophobia again, but it wasn't bad. I realized there were others here, at least one or two of my fellow prisoners who apparently hadn't made it either. We called to each other softly, checking up to be sure we were alright. Everyone was, beyond being disappointed and unsure of our futures, and before long the transport moved back towards the camp. I guess I was the last one out of the tunnel, or they did something else with any further escapees.

Now the transport morphed into something more like a cross between an ARMY SUV and a jeep. The backseat area had seats facing backwards behind the driver, and forwards in the back of the vehicle, so we could all face each other (as the prisoners were in the back, four of us, and two soldiers or guards were in the front). I don't think we were restrained at all, besides knowing the doors were locked. There wasn't any thought that we could escape now, at least, not from the car, and probably not from the camp again as they'd surely be watching us. And suddenly, the dream decided it was daytime and we were actually quite a ways away from the camp, returning to it.

We were talking about stuff, in English, mostly shooting the breeze as we really had no idea what we were headed for back at the camp. One of the guards said a few things as well, and I noted how good his English was. He sounded American, and when he spoke German (dream-German, lol what a mess that sounded like, mostly cuz I sure don't speak it) he seemed to stumble over it. I had just said, "I guess now we'll just have to wait for our boys in blue to come rescue us," and then I wondered... were these two guards really our guys? I think I said something like, "Hey, you wouldn't happen to be..." but then the guard who'd spoken the most English started doing the German thing again, and after stumbling a little more sounded more confident in it, and the other guard, the driver, spoke back to him in the same language.

We settled back and didn't say anything else until the ride was over back in the camp. Now the vehicle had two rows of back seats facing forward more like one would expect (dream logic was failing badly by this point, and continued to). I was in one of the middle section seats, and turned to help unbuckle "Tiny" who was (instantly) one of the main group of escapees and had also failed at actually escaping. He was child-sized, and then suddenly baby-sized, and actually a baby, and I was a woman, now sitting with him on my lap in the front passenger seat.

The baby was mine, and I was so happy to spend a little time with him but was sad because he was a boy, and he had to go back to the men's side of the camp because he wasn't allowed on the women's side. I begged the driver (who was formerly the guy in the passenger seat, the one who spoke good English) to let me take my baby with me, and I said, "He looks just like a girl if I put him in a dress. I bet when you were little, your sisters dressed you like a girl or something." (I'm not sure if that half-taunt was supposed to buy me brownie points with this guy or what. I was taking chances, trying desperately to keep my son with me.)

The baby had a diaper bag of some sort, and I had him in a dress shortly thereafter and said, "See, he looks just like a girl. Please let me keep him." The driver ascented, though I could see in his eyes he wasn't sure it would really work, and wasn't looking forward to possibly getting in trouble. But at the moment he was the one calling the shots, and it seemed like nobody else was close enough to notice the mixup. I was so happy, even though it might be difficult to keep pulling off the sham if someone squealed on me or whatever, but hey, I had my baby back!

I was a girl either of late teenage years or early twenties. I was in my room with my random dream-created friends of families not quite as rich as mine, but still rich. I called my best friend with my cell phone, a girl who's name I now forget, and I don't remember the conversation... I think we were going to all go pick her up for something though.

The next part I remember is riding shotgun in a car with the friends from my room, and we were talking about some other young guy who had ripped us off for money. After one of the others told snippets of her story, I said he'd scammed me for $750,000. The guy driving, who was a very good friend of mine, totally jaw-dropped. He knew I was rich (parents, specifically, extremely rich) but geez... I said the guy had managed to get me to look into buying three cars with him. I forget what the first one was, the second was a DeLorian that we got all souped up to look like the one from the Back to the Future movies, and the last one was a Dodge Viper. Somehow he'd managed to swindle me for all three cars and my father had sued him, which was on appeal (we'd lost the first time, I guess). And it wasn't like the money loss actually hurt my family, it was more a matter of pride trying to dole out justice on the jerk who'd scammed me.

We pulled up to a gas station and convenience store near a warehouse, and I don't remember exactly what happened next but it was almost time to go and I realized my buddies had managed to get themselves drunk. I had expected the one guy friend to drive further, but I told him to wait up and I'd drive. I wandered into the warehouse and asked if someone was there (I don't remember the name anymore). The employee I'd asked said he wasn't, but I knew better and said I'd go find him myself. So I walked into the back of the place behind certain stacks of product and found an older asian guy who was my friend, and the person I'd been seeking.

I asked him if he'd gotten "it" and apparently I'd been waiting on something he'd been trying to order for me or find. Yes, he had it, and he gave it to me. I remember the packaging was a box about the size of a PC computer game package (before they changed to the smaller boxes) but I don't remember what was in it now. I was ecstatic in the dream though, and asked him how much I owed him. I think he said $1,000, which I didn't mind paying but I griped at him playfully and said he'd probably gotten it for much less. He did admit in the end it was only like $17.99 and then I think he gave it to me for my birthday (which, dream-logic-magically, was now today).

I then said I'd give him $500 for his best bottle of scotch, a treat for something later (I was thinking of that very good guy friend who at this point was morphing into boyfriend). Asian-guy was looking at me skeptically for a moment and I added, "Not from your stash at home, I mean here." Ah, well that was different. Now I was majorly overpaying, as was my intention... but I knew it'd be good stuff regardless.

I know there was more to this dream, but I remember looking up the stairs (at what I imagined the house in The Exorcist book looked like) and saw twin girls who I knew were demon possessed. I remember being afraid because they were loose, not trapped in their room. They both looked like Alessa from Silent Hill, and they talked and moved in unison. I ran out the front door and so did two other people, a couple who I think might have been the parents of the girls, or housekeepers. We all got in the car and drove off, and I remember feeling so glad we had escaped. As we left the area we felt better and better, as if the evil was centered in the house and we'd thoroughly escaped it.

We came back some time later, I'm not really sure how long it had been (not all that long but probably more than a day or two). The house had burned to the ground and it seemed like the evil had been destroyed. There was a deep pit where the house had been, apparently there had been a major basement area when the house was still standing. There were some bits of wall left and a couple of stone chimney remains that went all the way down to the basement floor which was now dirt.

I was thinking everything else had been destroyed, then I saw people down by the chimneys. I thought at first they were looking for evidence or something, then I realized there were tall bookshelves down there that looked undamaged, and books in the shelves. Big tomes, philosophy or encyclopedia type hardbacks. I realized someone was selling them in an impromptu yard sale... and I think I went down there and looked at one of the books...

I was an Australian girl of about 12 years old sneaking through the dark in an attempt to let some kangaroos out of the evil McLeach's fenced off property. (McLeach is the villain from Disney's The Rescuers Down Under.) Also on this mission was Cooch (nature-happy treehugger type character from the Aussie comics Footrot Flats, skinny guy of indeterminate age). We split up and he went further towards McLeach's homestead. I made it to the part of the fence I wanted to cut but what I thought was going to be easy wasn't; McLeach had put in a very strong, brand new barbed wire fence that was quite tall. Luckily I'd brought wire cutters and wasn't afraid to take a little extra time.

I cut the section of fence I was by, but then I heard animal friends shouting that McLeach had just gotten into his truck at his house and was on his way to look for troublemakers. (Yeah, apparently I could talk to animals.) I was worried about Cooch but at this point it was everyone for themselves because if McLeach caught *anyone* it would be bad news for whoever got caught. I could see Cooch further up the road trying to find a hole in the fence on the other side (not McLeach's fence). I'd lost my wire cutters somehow, so I had to squeeze through the barbed wire on the non-McLeach side of the road. I found a space big enough but got scraped up a bit.

McLeach found the big hole in his fence and was quite upset. He had at least one or two dogs with him. He started looking around for who might have done it and calling out taunts, knowing I was probably still close enough to hear. Meanwhile I was busy trying to keep quiet; I was making my way fairly quickly along the bottom of a cliff but I was still too close to the road. I knew the fence wouldn't stop him if he figured out where I was even though it marked someone else's property.

I remember getting away and finding friends again, but for some reason as I was telling them what happened the dream rewound to the point where the animals were screaming it was time to run. This time I ran the other way along the road, further away from McLeach's place, with no real intention of trying to crawl through the fence to someone else's land. The road was very open and there were now two people with me, random people who I guess were on my side (stupid dream logic). There was nowhere to hide because of high fences, but then we found a tree at a corner and climbed it. This was a great idea at first but then the tree became flimsy and we were trying to hold the branches up, keep still, and look like tree parts ourselves. It was also suddenly broad daylight which made it even harder to hide.

McLeach drove by and stopped. He looked up at the tree and started making comments about it, meanwhile everybody in it was scared to death he was gonna see us. He didn't for the moment.

I dreamed I was with mother unit in a car driving along a freeway in Taiwan. We were talking about something, and I was looking at how the road had been designed. The area was very hilly so the freeway had been made in two sections, one for each direction of traffic, and most areas were raised on pillars. We passed a section on the other side that had a road crew all over it and at least half of the road had fallen in. I said something like, "That must be damage from that earthquake they had recently."

Then a huge earthquake hit and both sides of the freeway started breaking up everywhere. Mother unit drove faster because that was the only real option at this point, we were on a section raised above a lake. We thought we were gonna make it and then the road tore apart right in front of us and dropped off into the water. Next thing I know we're freefalling straight down towards the lake. I remember tugging my seatbelt a little tighter, and a feeling of adrenaline like being on a roller coaster.

We hit the water and survived relatively unhurt, but now the car was filling with water. Mother unit was freaking out but I told her we were okay and to calm down, and then to open the door and get out of the car. We pushed the doors open and swam out; the car filled with water and sank. It didn't sink very far though, because the lake apparently wasn't very deep. I realized I had no shoes on, and I sensed rusty cans and stuff on the lake bottom. The water was a very murky brown. I swam back into the car to put my shoes on and then headed for shore where some rescue people were pulling victims out of the water.

(Definitely inspired by reading Ultimate X-Men v.1 yesterday, this dream starts out rather more boring than the title implies but gets more interesting later.)

I was my real self at a Wal-Mart waiting in line at the entertainment department checkout. There was someone ahead of me and they were taking forever. There were at least two guys behind me as well. Someone had managed to find two chairs and they looked as if a lot of people waiting in line had used them that day. They were in the first and second person-waiting-in-line positions and the line was kinda spread out anyways, the store wasn't busy in our area except for those of us waiting in line. So I sat on the chair by my position and waited. I was buying a scanner that was on sale for $20 and I had some other stuff I'd set on a nearby shelf.

As I was waiting I realized I didn't have enough money to get all this plus Sims 2 which I was going to get in a couple days (this reflects real-life plans to get that game) so I just sorta left the extra stuff on the shelf and still sat there waiting since I was gonna buy the scanner regardless. (It was pretty much the same one my parental units got me for xmas but apparently my dream had forgotten about that.)

I was quite bored and looked over at the counter. The cashier was gone for some reason, but so was the person ahead of me in line. I moved up to the counter and set the scanner box on it. Suddenly there was shouting and an explosion from somewhere beyond the department, but close enough that it sent stuff around us flying. The other guys scattered and I found myself surrounded by a dozen rifle-armed black ops specialists, every muzzle pointed at my head. (At this point the dream logic decided I was an X-Men-style mutant and these guys were something similar to Weapon-X enforcers from the Ultimate X-Men comic book series.)

I thought at first they wanted to capture me but it turns out they were just going to kill me. I moved lightning fast and kicked up at the muzzles, spinning in a full circle. Now they weren't pointed at me but at random angles, and several of the bad guys fired as a reflex to my attack, hitting their buddies instead of me. The rest were easy enough to take care of quickly and I glanced around fast to see there wasn't anyone standing near me. I grabbed my scanner box (hey, a good scanner is a good scanner and the store was going to hell in a handbasket) and tucked it under one arm, heading for the main doors. On the way there I spotted another mutant (she looked like Ultimate X-Men Storm) and told her to follow me. As I ran out the front doors I noticed candy stands by the registers there and yelled at her to grab a candy bar, "Hell, grab a whole ****ing handful, we're going to need them."

She did and followed me out to the parking lot, looking a bit like a deer in headlights. (My character changed somewhere around this point, becoming male, sort of a punk, younger version of Wolverine.) As we're running across the parking lot I say, "Okay, where'd I put the Jag." (This was in part a vague realization I was dreaming, but only enough to seed an idea into the dream... it beat stealing a car.) I found it quickly after saying that, it was completely black and oldschool-meets-ultramodern (special edition?). I grabbed the keys out of my pocket and unlocked the door with the remote. I threw the scanner in the back and the girl got in the passenger side.

Pretty soon we were speeding down streets and away from the main area of town. The girl was worried that the cops must be after us, and I said "Oh they definitely are." Nobody was giving chase behind us at the moment, so the girl asked me how I knew for sure. "I can hear them, I pick up radio frequencies when I want to... and sometimes when I don't want to." (This was another semi-lucidly seeded idea, the whole time I don't remember hearing any radio but the dream logic didn't seem to care.)

Then there were two cars ahead of us driving directly at us through oncoming traffic. I swerved to miss them and ended up going down the embankment on the road we were now on, a small highway in a forested area. I kept the car running along the embankment but steering was sluggish and I couldn't seem to work the car back up to the road. The last thing I needed was for the cops to show up now, so I stopped the car and got out, telling the girl to stay put. "What are you going to do?" she asked fearfully, and I answered, "Use my other talent." I dragged the car back up to the road with inhuman strength and hopped back in the driver's seat. Vroooooooooooooooom!

The rest of the dream changed dramatically and made a lot less sense. I became the girl character, who was now white with blonde hair done up very prim (think Jane from A&E's Pride & Prejudice), and the other character was even more like Wolverine now, closer to the correct age for the movies and how he looks in Ultimate X-Men. We'd made serious tracks and were taking a break on a northeast-coast beach that was apparently a memorable spot to the guy character. Let's call him Logan (Wolverine's real name) cuz I think that's really who he was supposed to be at this point.

I was wading in ankle-deep water and talking to Logan about random things and it was obvious we'd fallen in love. A fog was creeping in and tendrils of mist curled towards the shore. Then a rather thick, smaller bank of fog rolled in, moving towards me. Eerily I noted that it seemed almost sentient as it moved straight for me. It covered my feet and moved up over my body, engulfing me. I passed out, falling into the water, and had a vision of a woman who looked at me out of the fog, at first suspicious but then she smiled and turned and left. I woke up a moment later in Logan's worried arms, and I told him what I'd seen. He said he used to come to this beach with his wife before she died, and it must have been her spirit. I still felt a little dizzy and he helped me walk back to the sand.

I was a female character of some sort in the universe of the movie The Specialist (starring Sylvester Stallone). I don't remember what his name was in the dream but in the movie it's Ray so let's go with that. Ray was elsewhere, and I think I was sort of an FBI agent who'd gotten romantically involved with him. Where I was at the start of the dream though had to do with a large explosive device. An evil character, an older male, was trying to set the thing off but I fought him and killed him, also managing to permanently disable the bomb.

I took a helicopter to the site where I thought Ray might be, it was somehow related to the bomb I'd just taken care of. As the helicopter approached, I realized an entire freeway had been blockaded because the local law enforcement knew about a second explosive device under the freeway. They didn't know I'd killed the mastermind yet.

I got off the helicopter once it landed on the road and went down below it, where the excitement seemed to be. Ray was there examining what looked like grey plastic explosive wedged under the road's support system. I guess the idea was that enough traffic passing over the thing would set it off. So it was still something of a danger even with the larger explosive taken care of.

Ray was trying to make it sound like he had a solution, but I knew he was BSing the cops and other feds standing around watching him like a hawk. He was, after all, wanted for other criminal reasons, but they needed his help with this situation. There were several spots where this plastic explosive had been set, and Ray moved to the next one with me following. I told the others I had this handled, and where did he have to run to anyways? They let me follow him and stayed back.

Below the next device was a manhole cover. He took the cover off and it was obvious he had no intention of sticking around to help the feds, he had his moment to escape now. I followed him, I'd had it with my job and would rather excape the whole mess with Ray. A ladder down the hole took us to what looked like an abandoned subway, and there was a getaway car set up on the tracks. We got in fast and raced away. Apparently someone did something stupid up on the road because the entire thing went up in a huge explosion, which apparently busted a water main in the subway system and so it took everything we had to keep ahead of the water in the tunnels. We escaped and drove off.

Then the dream replayed with less-than-happy-ending results several times... and morphed into another dream that was just plain stupid.

I dreamed I was beside a broad, deep river. There was a road nearby and a big black expensive-looking car drove up. Three men got out of the car, a rich looking guy and two bodyguard flunkies. They took something out of the trunk and threw it in the water... it was most definitely a body bag. And the rich guy said something like, "That'll teach you to cheat on me, b*tch."

Then a police car showed up and two officers got out. They were accusing the rich guy of murdering his wife and were going to arrest him and probably search the area. I walked up and said, "Huh? I'm his wife, and I'm not dead." The cops looked at me and apparently nobody knew what this wife person looked like, so they were like, "Oh, okay, sorry to trouble you," and drove off.

The rich guy who I had by this time figured out was in the mob looked at me and said, "So, my wife eh?" Now that I'd said that in front of the police I'd have to keep playing the game indefinitely. Apparently he didn't care and needed someone to fill the wife position anyways so the whole murder thing wouldn't come back. He started asking me something... was I really up for this or something... and I was like, "Sure," because I knew he'd take care of me as long as I was a good girl and didn't go messing around like his wife apparently had.

(Possibly inspired by reading The Art Of The Matrix and a short conversation with my kid sister about stealing cars.)

I don't remember if I saw the actual invasion or if I just heard/knew about it happening. An alien race of high technology was taking over our planet. They were enslaving millions, killing those who would not surrender (and killing lots anyways). A few of us managed to hide, but we knew they were coming. There were two groups, I (as myself) was in the first group with my real-life mother and sister, and the group seemed to consist mostly of women and children. The second group was all men. We did not know at this point if the second group had survived. I figured if we waited around we'd get killed.

So I spoke to the people gathered around that we had to go to the source if we were going to have a remote chance in hell to fight the aliens. It was blatantly obvious that aliens existed, so that meant that our government really did have a crashed alien ship in their possession (viva la conspiracy theories!) and they were probably researching and even using the technology from it already. I told the people around me we were going to Area 51. (For some reason I thought it was in Arizona throughout the dream, though that doesn't make sense upon waking... but I guess the dream logic figured that was close enough. Plus, my group was located somewhere near Washington D.C. so Arizona was just as far away as New Mexico considering at the moment all we had was our feet to travel with.)

I looked out of the warehouse we were hiding in, and there was a car in the dusty parking lot, baking under the hot sun. I ran to it and found the keys in the ignition. It started and someone said it was wrong to steal and I said it was our only chance. The owner might be dead anyways. So everyone else piled in (there might have been two cars, I forget) and we drove off. It seems like we had to switch vehicles at some point when we ran out of gas, and it took us longer to find cars with keys. I remember thinking that if the human resistance lasted long enough, someone should set up usable car hubs for people fleeing but especially for resistance group members to move around the country. Take a car, drive it to the next hub, get a new one.

The next thing I knew I was suddenly a member of the second group, a random white male character. This was the all-guy group, and we were on foot. We knew the aliens were not far behind and tracking us somehow. It was somewhat snowy and we put logs and big sticks across our path at random points. It seems like we knew the aliens had trouble getting past these (or some metal-like alien-made machine did) so at first it was worth it. We heard the aliens making annoyed sounds at our previous roadblock (we were on a path though, not a road). This caused some satisfaction in our group but I figured they were too close for comfort now and we had better just run.

I told the guys to be careful so they didn't fall, to run steady and not too fast. I was in the lead and made my way over some wet, potentially slippery rocks, and beyond. I remember thinking we were trying to catch up to the first group, and I remember something about the first group trying to figure out how to leave behind some sign of where they were going without giving the whole thing away to the aliens.

Then I saw a black guy in a car (seen from like a camera angle or perhaps from the perspective of one of the second group members). He'd stolen the car and it seems like he was a key resistance leader, maybe even the top guy. He looked like Samuel L. Jackson but a little younger. He was pulling up to a corner to turn left.

Then I was him. I don't think I was going anywhere specific, probably just on the run. I was driving casually and this seemed to be fairly normal, other people were driving along like there wasn't some huge alien invasion going on. I saw up ahead a bunch of cars driving closely together, and too slow. I felt like it was a trap, they wanted me to pass and the aliens must know where I was. There was a dirt road up ahead on the right and I took that instead (still driving somewhat casually). As I took the turn I noticed a huge semitruck come up into opposing traffic in the space I would have been in if I'd tried to pass the cars. As if in a movie, I heard the aliens or some people working for them (or the aliens could shapeshift to look human) saying over the radio "He didn't take it."

Now I was driving down the dirt road with an open field on the right and a dead-looking corn field on the left. I knew I was in potential danger but figured the aliens hadn't planned on me going this way, so I had some time. But then up ahead I saw an ambulance, two cars right behind it, and another ambulance following right behind the lot. Damn radios, they were able to move fast because of the communication. I think they might have been hoping that I'd think they were real ambulances and pull over to clear the road. I was definitely not stopping for that. They pulled into my lane, heading straight for me, and as I slowed down they stopped completely. I could see a big (red?) pickup truck coming up behind them fast, essentially blocking the opposing lane of traffic and there wasn't any more room to drive past the cars and ambulances.

A woman who might not actually know what's going on at this moment was now beside the closest ambulance. There was a big, somewhat-evil looking man near her. The pickup almost hit the woman but the man pulled her out of the way at the last second. I'm not sure what happened to the pickup after that (although it's angle would have put it in the field to the right).

Meanwhile, the road was thoroughly blocked now by even more vehicles. Well, I wasn't going down here. I opened the car door and bailed into the cornfield. The corn stalks didn't even have much in the way of corn on them, and they were tall, dried up spindly things that didn't give much cover unless I had a lot of distance between me and my attackers. The aliens chased me, except they were human looking or humans in league with them. I have a feeling some of them were actual aliens, some were converted humans (mind control?) and some just hired people, maybe even innocent and thinking they were working for honest humans, not aliens.

Several times various people got close and each time I sprayed bullets their way (yay for instant dream uzi's... maybe I got one off a soldier, some of the people chasing me appeared to be in the National Guard). I realized too many of my pursuers were too close and I dove to the ground trying to hide. Some part of me knew that the cover here was too scant but I thought as hard as I could "they can't see me" and it worked. I was able to move ahead slowly, barely crawling along.

Ahead were two people arguing about trying to find me. One was a white woman, she had a uniform on and seemed to be in charge. The other was a black woman, a hireling of some sort, maybe a mercenary type, and she was saying that I'd "just... vanished." The black woman was scared. She thought I might be some sort of legendary evil spirit or something. She said "Naga" like she was even afraid of saying the word. She refused to keep searching even though the woman threatened her, and walked off. (Maybe the white woman killed her for such insubordination, maybe the black lady managed her own vanishing act, I don't know.)

I couldn't keep hiding forever and on a mad dash they spotted me and shot me with some sort of tranquilizer. As I fell I rolled into a clearing in the cornfield. I fought the drug in order to stay conscious, but I didn't move. I lay still with my eyes closed so they wouldn't know I was still awake. I was lying on my chest and felt horribly heavy from the drug but I figured if I had one chance now, it was to keep hold of reality. Maybe I could find the right moment to run... if I could still run...

The bad guys came and one of them held me down with his knee in my back while the others surrounded me with guns pointed down at me. Someone came up and lifted my head a little. I felt fingers opening my left eyelid and I saw a nurse (a very stereotypical, outdated looking nurse, who was probably a shapeshifted alien who'd watched a little too much 1940's earth television). She used the little finger on her left hand to poke lightly at my eyeball. I remember being worried about her fingernail. I moved my eye only a little but still thought she might notice I was awake. But she seemed satisfied after a few pokes and let go of my eye. Just as I was thinking I'd succeeded in keeping at least one small advantage I felt a prick somewhere in my back and a very powerful dose of some drug sent me to unconsciousness.

I was instantly dreaming, I knew it, but it was unlike any other dream I'd ever had. The world was in shades of black and white, and even the sound in the air around me seemed foreign. I was breathing and could hear it like a controlled rush as I stared out what must have been some sort of helmet. I was looking at the corn field, the clearing I'd fallen into, but the scene had been surreally transformed into perfect right angles. The corn was no longer a mass of spindly stalks but featureless flat hedge-looking things. I was standing in the clearing, and it made a hallway between these odd flat wall-hedges that stretched out in front of me, before it ended in a T junction that led to thinner passages to the left and right. I felt rather than saw tubes coming from my helmet into my suit (some sort of space suit?) The helmet must have been large, because all I could see was the glass/clear protective surface before me that curved the secenery at the very edges of my vision. I realized that I was an alien now, a real alien, somehow connected to it, but I honestly felt like I was the alien. The end result was frighteningly realistic, but in effect redefining "real" because I wasn't human anymore.

There was nobody in the clearing ahead of me. I turned and saw someone behind me... it was the old me! The me I had been before this terrible dream. He was just standing there with an odd, somewhat stupid smile on his face. I felt such an intense and complete hatred for this man that I immediately reached out and grabbed the human face and head in my hands. (The alien hands were suited up almost like a typical astronaut in a space suit, only less bulky, and the gloved fingers and hands were human shaped.) I squeezed the man's head and crushed it, killing him. I dropped the body and turned back the way I'd originally been facing. I walked to the end of the corridor, all the time hearing the terrible breathing... my breathing...

There was bright light above me and I looked up, raising my arms in the glare and feeling a strange mix of familiarity and total exaltation. I felt my body being sucked up into the transporter of the alien vessel not far above me, like I became a digital painting that streaked upwards, first from my fingers and helmet and continuing quickly down until I was completely transferred to the receiving pod inside the ship.

The next thing I remember is a great, dark space, like the interior of a huge ship. A sinking feeling that I'd been asleep all this time and woken up who-knows-where under complete alien control told me that I was myself again... at least. But I wasn't sure how I was seeing what was before my eyes. It was like the ship I was in was transparent or at least the bulk of it seemed to be to my right and a little above me. Ahead of the alien ship was a pulsing beam of light that flexed a little like a frequency wave turned 3D. The ship was travelling along the light beam like it was a travel route; it disappeared into the front of the ship somewhere and I'm not sure if it continued out the back of the ship... it may not have.

The ship was going slowly and the whole time I could hear a loud, metallic, and vaguely deep voice saying over and over, "You are here. You are here. You are here." This vision didn't last long, as I moved almost involuntarily, trying to figure out if I could move at all, or where I was in all this. I felt sheets, the solidness of a bed below me, a very human feeling after such an alien experience. I was sure I'd seen the previous scenes, but had I been asleep and only just now woken? Had I been able to unwittingly access some sort of alien viewing system with my mind? Had I connected telepathically with the alien who I'd envisioned... killing me in the corn field? Had my death only been some wish or delusion on the part of the alien? I was obviously still alive... and in a bed somewhere... in alien custody, right?

Then I realized I was awake, truly awake, and this had all been just a dream.

I had been dreaming of other things, but then it was like I woke up as a new character in a new setting. I was the teenage daughter of a witch and warlock who also had a mean, bratty, spoiled son younger than me. They treated me badly. But they were all asleep at the moment, it seems like it was night time at this point but since the world was so many shades of grey, it was hard to tell. It was evening, at any rate. I was supposed to be in bed.

But what mezmerized me for a few moments was that the world was black and white. I knew then that I'd probably never dreamed like this before, that I must therefore always have dreamed in color. And I was so scared I had lost that ability entirely. But at the same time it was surreal, like being in a black and white movie, but this was real. I looked at my hand and my arm, and was amazed to see my grey skin color in this black and white world.

Then my subconscious filled in some dream plot: I knew no better, this was my world, and it had always been black and white. As I wandered towards the front door I realized I had to get out of here, that I'd had enough of my parents' opression and I was going to run away from it all forever. I ran outside and down the street, and I was wearing a flowy white nightgown. As I left the boundaries of my parent's property I must have also left the sphere of their magical influence, because the evening world was suddenly alive with color. I am not sure I have ever seen anything so brilliant, especially with the background of the dream that I'd never seen color before. The sunset above the houses to my right was a dazzling orange with a touch of incredible pink. It was a very Dorothy-waking-up-in-Oz moment.

I fell backwards, lying in the street staring up at the sky, blown away. I knew vaguely that lying in the road wasn't the safest or cleanliest idea, but I really didn't care, I was so enthralled. But then I heard the sounds of a car in the distance and got up. I ran up the incline in the yard ahead of me (beneath the sunset) and fell to the grass just in time, the car going by me didn't see me. I wasn't sure about this new world, and wasn't sure what people would think of me running around in my PJs. Then I realized it was my parents' car, with them in it (and my awful brother), and they were calling out my name and saying I needed to come back home, that it wasn't safe here, stuff like that.

I kept still until they were gone and then ran across a couple more yards, a street, and up into the next yard. All the yards seemed to have this little hill up into a more average yard area. I was part-way up the hill when I heard the car again, and fell flat on the grass again. I could see a married couple coming out of this house, just to enjoy the evening or something. I thought very hard, trying to create a spell to turn myself into a cat, and it worked, plus I created another cat as well, a real one, so I could copy its mannerisms. Plus my parents might be suspicious of one stray cat (as they were missing one stray daughter) as opposed to two. And both cats looked the same, orange and yellow striped short-haired tabbies. I don't think I was supposed to know how to use magic, that they'd forbidden it to me, but it was in my blood. Thinking about it now, I probably had massive untapped power I knew little about.

There was a tree in the yard and the couple was standing by it now. I went straight up to them and acted very friendly and meowed, looking for sympathy. We're just a couple of stray cat's looking for love. *meow* Adopt us!<3 My parents pulled up in the car and asked these people if they'd seen a girl wandering around lost. They also expressed suspicion about the cats, asking where they'd come from because they did look like newly arrived strays. Meanwhile I did kitty things like lick my paw and rub up against the tree. The couple said they knew nothing and the cats were just cats (possibly even claimed them as their own, because I got the impression the couple thought my parents a bit rude) and my parents left.

I turned back into a human and told them who I was and that I needed their help. (I think the other cat was unsummoned as well.) They led me inside the house to their living room and sat me down on the couch, sitting on either side of me, the man was on the right. I told them I was opressed and mistreated at home and the lady said something like, "Oh, I'm sure your parents are just trying to do what's best for you and they're worried sick about you, we should make sure you get back to them as soon as possible." She was rising as if to go call them but the husband said, "Now wait a minute, maybe the girl is right, we should let her speak." It was like the woman had a general faith in humanity being good, and the guy was more of a skeptic.

I knew then the easiest way to prove my plight (right then, like I'd forgotten it or it was so commonplace for me). I told them to look at my back, and it's like the bodice of my nightgown was fitted and had a zipper running down the back of it. The lady pulled the zipper down and they saw that my back had cuts in it, some long and some short. Some of the cuts looked very fresh (but clean, not bloody) and there was evidence of scars from many wounds past. Now both people were horrified at my treatment, and I knew I was safe with them and they would help me leave my old life behind.

My (real) parents were on a car trip, but it was like we all in the Great Depression era. We even had a car from then, one of those mobster looking things (the hit-man car that the modern PT Cruiser is modelled after). We stopped at a place to stay for the night, and I remember it being cold outside but still daylight. Inside the hotel was a line, a very long line. Everyone was sorta hunkered down along a hallway, with a blanket around them if they were lucky enough to have one. Then this lady who musta been the manager/owner scurried by, saying to herself quite audibly, "At least I have the alimony payment" over and over. I think she said something before that too, as she came in, like, "I can't do this I can't deal with this anymore."

I turned to Dad, who was crammed in an alcove behind me with other people, and I said, "That's not smart, she shouldn't talk like she's got money around a bunch of strangers, she's putting herself in danger. I guess she could have meant that she'd just successfully made an alimony payment, but the odds are entirely greater that she's the one with the cash." Dad said something in agreement.

I decided to follow her, worried she was gonna get in trouble. I managed to stop her outside the hotel, and asked if there was something I could do to help. At this point I was morphing into a sort of freelance detective character (still female, still kinda with my real personality). The lady said that the hotel's reputation was on the line, that someone had stolen a diamond necklace from one of the tenants. I asked who'd been in and out of the place lately, and the lady said there was one black kid named Scamp who hung around a lot (at least I think that's his name... something like that... Scat? Scraps? not sure).

Suddenly I knew he'd done it, call it gut feeling or whatever. I just had to find him and see what he'd done with it. I told the lady not to worry, that I'd take care of this, and asked if the tenant had reported the theft to the police yet. The lady said no, and I said "good" because Scamp would be less likely to be nervous if the cops weren't crawling all over the town looking for a thief.

I had no car and no driver's license, so I walked. I checked my pocket for coins and realized that in Great Depression standards I had a small fortune in coins in my pocket, even though it was just a little bit of change by today's standards. I knew I could use a taxi for a penny to get anywhere in town, and for two pennies I was certain any cabby would drive me all over for however long it took. I walked past my Dad who was bicycling down the main street for some reason (like he belonged in this town?) and then I got a taxi.

I stopped at a jewelry store and asked if anyone had sold or tried to sell a diamond necklace here recently. "No." Had anyone seen Scamp around? "Yes, he's over at the laundromat a lot." So I went there and saw him across this big room of washers and dryers. He was talking to himself, working out his own code of holes in the wall, and by pressing the right one he openned a secret compartment in the wall. He hid something in a small box that came out of it (like a CD player ejecting it's tray, but the box came out completely) and then closed it again.

I went up to him, pretending I hadn't seen the secrets (there were three compartments total). First I talked to him, making him trust me and feel safe with me. Then I convinced him to give up the goods, and I openned the third compartment (I knew which one probably had jewelry from watching earlier). I asked him if one necklace was the diamond one missing from the hotel, but I had guessed wrong and he pointed out the correct one. It was a diamond set in a open heart shape made of gold, and the chain was gold too. I put that necklace in my right front pocket of my shirt so I wouldn't get it mixed up again. I said I'd help him return the rest of the stolen jewelry too. One of the other compartments had stuff that was actually his, just little odds and ends like pieces of ribbon. He started to tell me about his sister. He said, "You know my sister's depressed, right?" She was poor too, and spent all her time in her room. She seemed to be getting sicker and sicker. Everone expected her to just sorta pine away and die, like there was no way to help her.

I went to visit the sister and saw her room was awfully decorated in puke green and a color I like to call "grandma orange." I guess she liked green and orange together, but I knew just the decor alone had to be making her depression worse. I found a pillow that had a pattern of orange flowers on green leaves, and I said, "How would you like to see your room completely made over in this green" and I pointed to an almost lime-green, "and this orange" and I pointed to a matching neon orange. (Very Target/Ikea-like, or fairly typical "Bed In A Bag" bedding color options.) I was already thinking of patterns for the bedding and accessories. The girl seemed interested, and I knew this makeover would be a huge breath of fresh air for her. Plus, we'd be getting her all new clothes and a hair makeover too. This was starting to feel like one of those extreme makeover shows, and the Great Depression era was fading into modern times.

And then that's exactly what it was. I was the host of a makeover show, and I'd become a black lady. I was standing on the porch of the house the following morning talking to the girl's mother and aunt or someone like that (they were all black too, of course, since Scamp was black in the first place and this was his family). The women were sitting around on the patio furniture. I said, "Now, we've got a lot to do, lots of shopping to get done, so I better get started." And I was going to go in and get the girl.

The earliest part of this dream had me stuck on an island somewhere with one or two other people. There was a large fort that had to do with the dream plot I can't remember anymore. But at the end part of this dream the other people seemed to think we'd get rescued, yet I knew the odds of that weren't good. In fact I seemed to know we might be there indefinitely.

I found some blackberry bushes and blueberry trees and started planting berries in paper cups of dirt. My idea was to start a sort of mini-farm out of this stuff. (Mind you, blueberry bushes aren't the easiest things to nurture and take years before they will produce berries... and to my knowledge they don't become trees... but it made sense in the dream). Then it seemed like the other people had found a raft, so we all got on it and went out in the water. But I ended up by myself in the water for some reason. The current was very strong, and I thought it might take me to another island or the mainland. I saw some land coming up that didn't look familiar, but as soon as I was on it I realized it was the same island.

The next bit is unclear, but the dream changed to me going to visit a halfling (hobbit) friend in a series of underground caves where other halflings lived. But she wasn't there, and it looked like the place had been trashed. I realized she'd been kidnapped, and wondered if there was some message she'd left behind that would help me know where she'd been taken. I found her sewing basket and started taking it apart. I figure if she'd had the time, she would have had to hide the message very well so that her captors didn't destroy it. After taking apart a lot of the sewing basket components down to the box inside all the fabric and foam, I put it down to see if there were clues anywhere else.

Then her phone rang (yeah, a halfling with a phone, and a video phone no less). It was her! But it looked like she was being held somewhere and this call was a sort of asking-for-ransom-money deal or something. She couldn't directly tell me where the clue was that I was sure she'd left, because the bad guys would surely hurt her and cut her off before she could finish telling me, but what she did say was, "You are an artist, after all." The phone call ended, and I don't really remember what else had been said. I was thinking about the artist thing, and wondering if she meant the sewing basket (or well, what was left of it) was really where she'd hidden the clue. Part of the inside box had a simple painting on it. Had she had time to hide something under the paint? It was dry and looked like it belonged on the box.

Either I've forgotten what happened next or the dream changed again. Now I was talking to Mom about going on a trip. It was one that my brother Jamie was supposed to be going on too and meeting us at the destination and I told her I didn't want to see him so I wasn't going. In the end it turned out he wasn't going to go so I think I went. There was a dinner scene, at the destination of the trip (wherever it was) and I said I had to use the restroom as we were all being seated. For some reason I really I didn't want to sit next to my kid brother Peter and I said something about that as I walked off (the only seat left had been next to him, and Mom said something about switching seats real quick and Peter started whining).

Then I think I decided that I wasn't going back. I found myself in a sort of weird shopping mall, and for some reason I was pretending I had a foot problem. I was limping really badly. A couple of ladies looked at me funny as I was looking for the restroom (this was still on my mind, even though I knew I wouldn't be returning to the family after I found it). I found a stand nobody was watching, and I realized somewhere in my mind that I was dreaming, so I knew if I could get away with it in the dream it would be okay to steal something. The object in question was actually icecream, it was kinda like those little ones you can get in paper cups. I picked it up and held it under my shirt, which was really big and baggy.

Then a black guy showed up who was probably supposed to be watching the stand, and he asked me if I needed anything. I asked him where the restroom was, the entire time nervous that he'd somehow catch me with the icecream (which was very cold). But he told me it was upstairs, and pointed across the lobby/hallway thing that comprised most of the mall. Where he was pointing, there were these odd elevators that went up to the next floor, and there were a bunch of them in a row. They had glass walls so people could see out while the elevators went up and down.

I went over there trying to find an empty elevator, but when I thought I was going into a sort of holding area just before one elevator, it turned out to be something else, maybe machinery that ran the elevators. I knew I wasn't supposed to be in that area, so I went back out. I gave up on the elevators and thought about stairs, then I looked around to see if there were actually any restroom signs anywhere. I did see one... but thinking about it now it didn't make much sense and it had no arrow. I was standing by the sign thinking it meant I should go up some stairs right near me, and then I noticed the mall exit doors.

I decided to go out them, and it was night time outside. For some reason I felt like I should hide, and dropped low to the ground and almost crawled over to this bush by the doors. A car went by and I remember being worried about the light from the headlights. By this time I managed to eat some of the icecream, and then someone who was my friend met me behind the weird bush thing. (I have no clue who the guy was supposed to be now, but in the dream he was a real friend). I might have said something to this person, but then this other guy showed up and started saying who I was. I had no idea who he was but he was dead right on all the stuff he said about me. He looked at my friend and said all kinds of true stuff about my friend too. The stranger said that we'd been destined to go on a quest, an adventure of the greatest proportions, and that he had a contract for us to sign. It seems like the quest would be a fantasy sort of thing in another world.

My friend said he didn't think signing the contract was a good idea. Meanwhile the stranger had handed it to me, and I had intended to sign it (what the hell, eh? I was running away after all and had no real plans, I'd definitely sign up for an adventure since it seemed like I knew this was going to be something like what I've been waiting for my whole life). But as I was looking at the contract, the words and lines to sign and stuff kept changing, moving around somehow (probably because reading in dreams is often a very difficult task). I had to ask the stranger where I was supposed to sign it even though he'd already showed me before the words and lines started moving around.

It was night time and I was myself, standing in a park by some rocks that my friends were digging around in. I don't know who the people were supposed to be in the dream beyond friends or aquaintances, but we had found the location to some sort of treasure and they were digging for it. Just as some other people approached, I found what I knew was the treasure, it was a bunch of small dirty rocks and I quickly stuck them in my pockets.

The people approaching us were going to take the treasure away from me, I somehow knew this. I also knew that they had some sort of other treasure (it seems like I visualized a weird system of small metal cubes that the rocks could be put into), and that they could use their treasure to figure out some hidden message or clue in my treasure. So I started yelling at the top of my lungs that the bad guys were part of some gang (I yelled a specific name in my dream but don't remember it now). And we were in the territory of another gang and they'd be really unhappy to find out that these other people were on their turf. Mind you, the bad guys weren't really in the rival gang, I just made that up.

They were hesitating so I walked out of the park and into a parking lot, and stopped yelling as I came up to my car. It was a very sporty car, and it was either blue or green. I had a remote to unlock it and got in quickly because one of the bad guys had actually followed me that far. He was trying to get into the car with me but I sped off and left him rolling across the pavement cursing at me.

The design of the car changed from a super sporty thing to a very futuristic concept car type of thing. It was a one-seater now, and I sort of reclined in it, my right foot going into a recess on one side that had the gas pedal, and my left foot in a matching recess on the other side that had the break pedal. There was no gearshift and I have a feeling it was using some type of new technology, not a normal automatic transmission. And the car was really fast. The steering wheel was really cool, it was kind of like a slightly flattened half sphere with two smoothed out holes in each side. If you wanted to spin the steering wheel really quicky, you could use one of those holes and put your finger in it and rotate the whole wheel very quickly because there was almost no friction in the whole system. And the way you got into and out of the car was to pull down this clear rounded glass windshield thing over yourself that went down to where your feet was and attached to the back of the car behind your seat. And the way the gas and break pedals worked, you could really slide around a corner fast. And I was an excellent driver, racing along the nighttime streets.

And now I was Vin Diesel. I might have been something similar to his character in the movie XXX, but I'm not sure. Either way, one of the bad guys was managing to catch up to me in another car, even though I was able to take my interesting little vehicle onto sidewalks and stuff. I ended up driving the thing into a store, it fit through the doorway. There was a cop in the store but he didn't try to stop me, I think he knew I was a good guy (so I guess I was some sort of good guy at this point in the dream plot). As I was going out the back door of the store, the car changed into a motorcycle. And there were two back doors in the store, one set right after the other (no it didn't make a whole lot of sense), and they were supposed to open automatically but seemed to be having trouble recognizing that I wanted to go through them. I waved my arm to set off the motion detectors and was able to get out of there even though I basically had to hold the doors open so I didn't scratch the bike.

I found myself on a sideroad by the main drag and for some reason I couldn't get much speed. I realized I was almost out of gas. Conveniently, there was a gas station right near me so I pulled in. I had some sort of card that would let me get free gas forever (or for as long as I worked for whatever good-guy organization I was working for, thinking the feds). I was filling up the tank using this odd little hose thing and someone else was filling up their car. I think we talked about something, maybe the bike.

This is a continuation of the alien dream I posted last time, just with a lot more plot holes and goofy stuff that makes no sense. If you haven't read the first dream, you'll want to or the rest of this won't make sense.

It was daytime. Apparently we had survived the first alien attack. Or it hadn't come, for some reason. The house that was key to the last dream meant less in this one, and it had changed in looks and location. It was smaller and surrounded by desert, not really sandy desert but sort of limestone stuff. Plus it was near a huge chasm.

Anyways, I heard that my Kurt Russel alien story had been made into a movie, and that the VHS version was newly available at a town up north of the house. I decided to go get it, thinking there was enough time before the alien invasion. I took an eastward road around the chasm and then headed north, I think I was driving a safari-style jeep.

I don't remember if I got the movie or not, but it seems like I ended up back at the house, to find out that a whole ton of people (who must have lived in the area, maybe including the townsfolk from up north) were going to the other side of the chasm to a network of caves to hide out from the aliens. And that they had already left... and once they got in the caves, they'd seal some special doors that had been built there, maybe by the government. I could see them on the other side of the chasm, they were in a long line and some of them had torches because the sun was setting. There were people with me, probably my family or remnants of the people who'd been with me in the first dream, and I knew we would never make it to the caves on time.

So I said something about making full use of our closet we'd stocked with food, and that we should get on in there.